Dr. DARYL BURCKEL AND DR. WADE ROUSSE
The leadership baton will soon be handed over to incoming McNeese State University president Dr. Wade Rousse. Another chapter in McNeese’s 85-year history will begin, and we can only hope it’s not as chaotic or tumultuous as the previous five years.
Outgoing president Dr. Daryl Burckel led his beloved school for the last seven years through what was inarguably the university’s most stressful and difficult time.
The list of past pressure points is long –– two hurricanes that decimated the region including much of McNeese’s campus and the subsequent insurance battle and FEMA waiting game. Before that, there was a global pandemic that changed the way the university educated paying students. And then the state legislature’s constant assault on higher education budgets, the challenge of falling enrollment, and an athletic department that was treading water competitively and underwater financially.
Burckel’s presidency wasn’t the longest, but it was surely the strongest, most effective and enduring in school history.
Over the past several years there were critics and naysayers chirping about McNeese’s direction and decreasing student enrollment numbers. Through all the noise, Burckel, a former undersized Cowboys’ linebacker, kept pushing forward, grinding and tackling problems one by one.
At some point earlier this year, he decided this president’s job had an expiration date; for him this would not be a lifetime assignment. Burckel announced that he would be retiring on July 1 and would be returning to his first love: the classroom, where he’d teach accounting and economics again.
Wade Rousse, who was serving as McNeese’s executive vice president, won the presidency over a fairly robust list of candidates, by a University of Louisiana System board of supervisors unanimous vote. Rousse’s impressive resume includes degrees from Nicholls State, UNO and a PhD in economics from the University of Illinois-Chicago.
No doubt he is a smart fella and undoubtedly will need all that brain power to navigate a unique minefield of challenges and issues. Rousse came back to Lake Charles in 2019 as a professor and dean of the College of Business before later becoming vice president of university advancement. He’s been one of Burckel’s most authoritative senior administrators.
Rousse’s line of sight only went so far, and the buck didn’t stop at his desk. But that will soon change. The two men have been working closely the past month or so on a smooth transition. Rousse has been finalizing the selection of his inner circle of executive directors and advisors.
Very soon, Rousse will have a clear, unobstructed view from atop the university landscape. It could be an eye opening, slightly daunting experience. This is a sports column, so I will eventually lean in on that side of the president’s job, but everything starts and ends with customers.
McNeese can’t stay in the business of education without customers, in this case students. Rousse is quick to point out his top challenge will be “Enrollment. We’ve got to stabilize enrollment. It’s our primary objective. You know we have a situation where enrollment is revenue, whether we want to admit it or not,” Rousse says.
“We don’t get a lot of control over pricing our product. All we can do is handle the flow, which means we have to have enrollment and stop the declining enrollment. So, our first primary objective is absolutely (to stabilize) enrollment.”
Revenue, product, pricing, customers. It’s in the DNA of someone like Rousse, who has a PhD in economics. If the recent president selection process tells us anything, the powers in Baton Rouge feel doctorates in accounting or economics is a prerequisite for the job. Clearly running a university these days is like managing and overseeing a business. McNeese’s corporate umbrella just happens to include a complex maze of academics, education, budgets, investments, profit and loss, facilities, faculty, food service, hospitality, security, transportation, fundraising, endowments, scholarships, politics and athletics.
Which leads me into my sandbox. It’s common knowledge McNeese athletics was close to $3 million in the hole as little as three years ago. Burckel was able to see that relying on a booster club and a few good-hearted, well-heeled supporters to carry the financial load was a doomed business model.
Burckel named his men’s head basketball coach Heath Schroyer, who had no administrative experience, as his new athletic director and point man. Burckel’s next chess move was to appoint then vice president Rousse to establish and direct the new McNeese Athletic Foundation (MAF).
In short, MAF centralized and organized fundraising, took over corporate sales and sponsorships from Learfield (an outside marketing company) and gave a name, structure and a consistent message to the effort. It was a bold move that brought the athletic department into the 21st century.
Less than three years later and $2.5 million plus in new corporate deals, the athletic department posted its first surplus, maybe ever. “We think there is still room for growth,” explained Rousse. “When we first started this (MAF), I told Heath (Schroyer) we could probably do $3 to $3.5 million.”
Rousse saw where the marketing agreement with Learfield Sports, which has deals with both small and large universities across the country, was a dead-end road for McNeese. He noted the most Learfield ever shared with McNeese was in the range of $450,000 per year.
The goal of Rousse, Schroyer and MAF was to reduce “donor fatigue” so there wasn’t a multitude of people asking for nickels from the same, small pool of supporters every other month. The plan now, according to Rousse, would have McNeese Athletics “asking for plenty nickels at one time.”
As Rousse prepares to take that bigger corner office with a window, he has MAF in place and Schroyer as its primary leader building the financial coffers. He has the long-awaited football stadium press box and luxury suites under construction, thanks to Burckel and his team. He has head basketball coach Will Wade setting records for wins, titles and attendance. He has the baseball and softball programs contending for championships under the steady direction of coaches Justin Hill and James Landreneau.
Rousse saw men’s and women’s track and field have success. Women’s tennis, volleyball and soccer have also won their share. Plus, the addition of women’s beach volleyball was an interesting and unexpected twist.
All of this resulted in McNeese placing second for the Commissioners Cup, a yearlong athletic ranking in the Southland Conference. And it also resulted in significant improvement on the academic side for student athletes, which removes the heat from the NCAA on APR standards.
The elephant in the locker room is a football program with a 4-17 record over the past two seasons and a women’s basketball team that’s 31-59 the last three years combined.
Both Gary Goff in football and Lynn Kennedy in women’s hoops now have recruiting/transfer portal coordinators to help secure better talent, but their overall competitive balance falls squarely on their shoulders as both men enter critical seasons.
“Number one, we have to win. We have to win more games, and I have set some very clear objectives for my athletic director that he has to obtain,” noted Rousse. He went on to say he thinks football “is on the right path” as Goff prepares for his third season.
Rousse admitted he “doesn’t get into the intricacies” of each sport but he has taken notice of high-level new players and the impressive talent with local roots that Goff and Kennedy have brought in this off season.
On the subject of a possible jump up to the FBS level in football, Rousse says he is in support and is aligned to that goal. He says, “we are running toward NIL and not away from it” and he says he understands how paying athletes will attract better talent and have positive effects academically.
The new university president fully understands the critical impact successful sports programs have on McNeese’s budget, stature, regional and national recognition and enrollment growth.
He celebrated the Cowboys SLC Tournament title and bid to the NCAA tourney like the rest of the fan base — jumping, yelling and hugging coaches and players as the net in the Legacy Center was cut down.
Rousse will always view the success of sports, like basketball, through the prism of business and how it effects awareness and enrollment growth. “From the time the Southland Conference was won (in basketball) ‘til the night we lost to Gonzaga, we had a 1604-percent increase in our website clicks on ‘about us’ and our degree programs. To me, that’s meaningful clicks. If they are just getting on there to look without anything else there is no real benefit.
“But when they start digging into the degree programs we offer, about us and who McNeese is … that’s meaningful, and that’s the importance of athletics,” Rousse said.
“The biggest way we can develop our brand is through winning athletic programs. Very dynamic theatre. It’s the outreach to the community to get folks involved and students excited about being a part of our university.”
The challenges of growing the student base at McNeese continues to mount — from a decreasing demographic of college-age students across the country to the increase of students choosing trade schools or technical colleges like SOWELA instead of four year universities, to constantly increasing costs and the intense competition for students just in Louisiana between regional universities and larger LSU and UL-Lafayette.
An interesting national survey was recently released that said 60-percent of college age students now feel they can achieve career goals without an academic university degree. That’s a huge jump from 51-percent just a year ago.
And if that’s not problematic enough, the state legislature is now crowing about another round of higher education budget cuts, to the tune of $250 million, on the horizon. It seems a .45 cent sales tax will end in June of next year, leaving a fair-sized state budget shortage in 2025. University presidents around Louisiana, including Dr. Burckel, are already sounding the Armageddon alarm of severe impact and distress to stretched budgets.
On top of the state dilemma, don’t forget about the national NCAA lawsuit settlement for $2.7 billion involving past athletes who could not benefit from NIL going back as far as 2016. This settlement agreement could trickle down to McNeese and effect the athletic budget to the tune of $300,000 at some point down the road.
Those are stats I’m sure Rousse and his leadership team will be more concerned about than McNeese’s third down conversion rate or three-point shooting as they look out from their new top floor offices.
Catch Rick Sarro’s commentary and latest opinions on Soundoff on CBS Lake Charles on Tuesday and Thursday at 10:05 pm and on Saturday at 6 pm. Follow Rick on Twitter @ricksarro.
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